Each of the candidates for the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination has been presenting themselves as the best "change agent" in the race.
"For 35 years I’ve been a change-maker and that is exactly what I hope to do for all of you and for every American," Hillary Clinton said recently in Council Bluffs.
During the Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in mid-November, Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama each offered a "change" mantra.
As Obama was introduced to the crowd, "are you ready to rumble?"-like music pumped through the hall and an announcer called Obama a "six-foot-two-inch force for change."
"That’s why I’m in this race, to offer change that we can believe in," Obama said in the middle of his speech.
Clinton’s main offering on the topic that night was, "change is just a word if you don’t have the strength and experience to make it happen."
Edwards offered up this: "It is time for us to give America hope. It is time to give these entrenched interests that are standing against America hell. That’s the only way we’re going to win this fight. It’s the only way we can turn America around."
By the end of December, what is each of the three offering as their closing commentary on change? Obama gave this answer during an interview with Radio Iowa on Saturday.
"If voters were primarily looking for Washington experience then I wouldn’t be where I am because other people have been in Washington a lot longer than I have, in fact, Joe Biden would be in the lead," Obama said. "That’s not what people are looking for. People are looking for who can actually bring about change. I’ve got a track record, a history of doing that for just about my entire adult working life. More and people who hear what I’ve done I think conclude that this is somebody who can deliver for us in the White House."
Clinton talked with Radio Iowa late today. "I am well equipped and prepared to go into that Oval Office and no matter what’s sitting on the table, begin to address the challenges we face, come up with the solutions that our times demand and to be prepared for all of the unexpected because I think it’s clear that we don’t know all of the problems and challenges that the next president will confront," she said.
And this is the closing argument John Edwards has been offering on the campaign trail. "I am the candidate who will fight for the change we need, not just wish it’s going to come," Edwards said on Iowa Public Television last weekend. "I’m going to fight for it with everything I’ve got."